


like a shipwreck we die going into ourselves

by softestlesbian



Category: Wooden Overcoats
Genre: F/F, First Kiss, Hurt/Comfort, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-28
Updated: 2016-09-28
Packaged: 2018-08-17 13:36:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8145991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softestlesbian/pseuds/softestlesbian
Summary: She gets up, grabbing a scalpel out of her drawer, and kicks off her shoes so she’ll make as little noise as possible heading upstairs. She heads out of the room carefully and quietly, skipping the third and seventh steps entirely so she doesn’t mistakenly step on the creaky bits. 
She pushes the door open once she gets up there, crossing her arms. She only realizes her mistake when she feels a sharp pain in her abdomen and she gasps, tossing the scalpel into the sink and holding her fingers against the wound. 
“Georgie?” she calls, all thoughts of apprehending the intruder gone. If there is someone here intent on killing her, surely they’ll take her to hospital now so they have the chance to do it on their own. That's what she'd do, anyway.
*
In which Georgie and Antigone discuss first kisses and Georgie worries Antigone has endangered her life.





	

**Author's Note:**

> so here it is!
> 
> title from "nothing but death" by pablo neruda. (i googled "poems about corpses" to get this title and let me tell you, there's some intense morbid poetry out there.) 
> 
> warnings: there's some very mild violence and descriptions of blood, and morbid talk (though definitely nothing worse than what's on the podcast).

“Have you ever kissed anyone?” Georgie asks.

Antigone jumps; it’s significantly more unpleasant when someone sneaks up on you, it seems, than when you sneak up on another. She makes a mental note to apologize to Chapman. “Georgie!” she says, voice louder than she means it to be. She rests a hand over her heart, mostly just so she can feel it. 

“Sorry,” Georgie says with a careless little shrug. “Have you, though?” 

Antigone sighs, long and put-upon like she’s heard Rudyard do a thousand times. As soon as she’s had the thought she feels a little bit ill; best not think of that ever again. “Well, what d’you reckon counts as a proper kiss?” she asks. 

Georgie’s face looks caught between a scream and a sneeze. It still looks lovely on her. “Er, have you ever kissed anyone? Ever? A kiss is a kiss, least in my experience.” 

“Oh,” Antigone says. “Yes, then.” She looks back at her book as soon as she’s said it. She’ll never understand Georgie’s fascination with such things. 

“Who?” Georgie demands. She pushes her over on the table (cleanly washed and everything, Antigone will have her head) so she can hop up next to her. 

“D’you remember that funeral we did a few years back? Was held in the church?” Antigone asks. She marks her place in her book with her finger, careful not to let the cover show. 

“Oh, don’t tell me you found yourself a boyfriend at a funeral,” Georgie says. 

Antigone laughs. It’s a strange sound, a stranger feeling. “No, I didn’t. Kissed ‘im right before I put the embalming fluid in.” 

“You don’t mean,” Georgie trails off. “You don’t mean you kissed a dead man?” 

“Sure,” Antigone says, frowning at that. “Just a quick thing, but I’d always had a bit of a crush on him and it was sad to see him go, you know? I wanted to get my first kiss out of the way, anyway.” 

Georgie is, mercifully, quiet. 

Antigone manages to finish three paragraphs before she says anything else, and by that moment she’s almost forgotten she’s there. 

“I don’t think that sounds like a real kiss,” she finally says.

Antigone doesn’t jump. She has years of practice not letting on to Rudyard that he’s gotten underneath her skin. “Then I haven’t kissed anyone,” she snaps, words coming out fast and clipped. 

Georgie stays there for another second. 

“ _ If _ there’s nothing else,” Antigone says, hair falling in her face, “kindly leave my mortuary so I can finish this book.” 

“I’m sorry,” Georgie says, the beginning of a sentence rather than the end of one. 

Antigone can’t take that; she doesn’t have the time or the energy to deal with it. “ _ Georgie _ , please,” she says, voice still hard. 

Georgie doesn’t say anything else; Antigone listens to her walk away and forces herself to stay still until she hears the snap of the door sliding into place. 

She lets out a long breath at that, closing her book and setting it to the side. All of this talk, all of this -- everything, and Georgie keeps asking, won’t bloody well let it rest. 

Upstairs, she hears the jingling of the bell in the -- 

Hang on. They haven’t got a bell in the door; Rudyard kept kicking it open in the middle of the night and waking the whole square up and eventually Georgie took it down. Everyone that cares to see the likes of them announces their presence anyway, whether vocally or through the smell of the freshly dead.

She gets up, grabbing a scalpel out of her drawer, and kicks off her shoes so she’ll make as little noise as possible heading upstairs. She heads out of the room carefully and quietly, skipping the third and seventh steps entirely so she doesn’t mistakenly step on the creaky bits. 

She stands just beside the door, listening with her breath held. She can still hear the sound of her heart beating, which is annoying but really without a cure unless she wants to try one of the experiments she keeps reading about.

She doesn’t hear anything, so she pushes open the door, careful not to let it squeak. 

No one is in there. 

She pushes the door open the rest of the way, crossing her arms. She only realizes her mistake when she feels a sharp pain in her abdomen and she gasps, tossing the scalpel into the sink and holding her fingers against the wound. 

“Georgie?” she calls, all thoughts of apprehending the intruder gone. If there is someone here intent on killing her, surely they’ll take her to hospital now so they have the chance to do it on their own. 

There’s no answer. 

This is it; Antigone may die here. She takes a second to be very, very angry she hadn’t demanded Georgie stay around. A second later, though, she rethinks that. She’d rather this than discuss her not-first kiss. 

_ Not a real kiss _ . Nonsense. 

“Georgie!” she yells again, louder. Her voice tapers off into a shriek at the end, enough that her throat hurts. Today’s all turning to shit, it seems. 

“Alright, alright,” comes Georgie’s voice. “‘as someone else died, then?” She slams the door behind her, rattling the walls. The bell on the door --  _ bell on the door _ , Antigone would like very much to rip it apart -- jingles, bright. 

“No, no one has died,” Antigone snaps, digging her fingers into the wound. She gasps; it  _ hurts _ , which should be self-evident but apparently slipped her mind. “I might, though, if you don’t grab me some gauze and rubbing alcohol.” 

Georgie is a little bit closer now; that’s progress, at least. “Are you sure you don’t want me to call a doctor?” she asks. 

_ Honestly _ , it’s as though the whole village (nothing close to a town) forgets that Antigone has a medical degree. “No, Georgie,” she snaps, blood slipping between her fingers. It’s almost comforting, but there’s no time to focus on that now, and anyway distraction of that sort is often a precursor to more dangerous injuries. Anyway. “I need you to get me some bloody gauze and bloody alcohol so I can clean off my  _ bloody _ fingers!” 

Georgie scurries away. Antigone breathes out hard and drops to the ground, crossing her legs underneath her. 

Georgie runs back in. “Are you all right?” she asks, voice much more gentle now, though no quieter. She’s holding the gauze, at least, which means Antigone can clean it. 

“I’ll be better once I’ve got this off,” she says, grimacing down at herself. She’s soaked through with blood, or at least her shirt is. “Get it for me, would you?” she asks. 

“Yes, yes, of course,” Georgie says straightaway. She gets onto her knees and undoes the button of Antigone’s jacket, murmuring, “this might hurt,” before she pulls it away from the wound. “How the hell’d you manage this, anyway?” 

Antigone breathes out fast but doesn’t cry out. “Nicked myself with -- with a scalpel, careful,” she says, shrugging the jacket away from her skin. 

“What’d you have a scalpel for?” Georgie asks, very gently smacking her on the side of the head. 

Were Antigone not in a very, very difficult place as it is, she’d take offense. As it stands, she’ll have to wait until later, when she’s stopped bleeding quite so much. “I heard the bell,” she says. 

Georgie frowns at that, pouring alcohol onto the gauze and pressing it against her skin. Her free hand cups Antigone’s cheek; it’s a comfort, if slightly hot and too affectionate. “Dunno why that means you’re running around stabbing yourself,” she says. 

Her fingers are gentler than Antigone would have expected, with how brash she is so much of the time. Somewhere inside her she thinks,  _ if it were Rudyard she wouldn’t be so careful _ . She doesn’t say it out loud, but she knows it’s true. 

“We took the bell down. I thought someone was trying to break in and steal the kettle,” she says, panting a little bit when the sting hits her particularly hard. “Georgie,” she gets out. It’s not a whimper, it  _ isn’t _ , but it may be close to one. She makes a mental note to give Georgie a raise, now that she’s a partner and has that authority. 

“I know,” Georgie says, running her fingers through her hair. “It’ll all be over in a minute, yeah?” 

That makes Antigone’s blood run cold -- well, the blood that isn’t currently running out of her. “Are you going to kill me?” she asks. 

Georgie laughs. “No,” she says. “I only mean you’re nearly clean, can lessen up on it. Idiot,” she says. It doesn’t sound like it does when Rudyard says it (or Eric, or any of the others in Piffling Veil). If Antigone didn’t know any better, and she weren’t currently likely delusional, she’d call it fond. 

Antigone still fixes her with a look. “Are you through, then? I’d like to lie down,” she says. She looks outside, only to see it’s midday. Strange. She’s almost certain she went down in the early evening. 

Georgie frowns. “I think I should go down there with you,” she says, dropping her hand from her hair and securing the gauze in place with some tape. “I’m afraid you’ll die in your sleep, and then who’d keep me from killing Rudyard?” 

Antigone laughs. It’s not her practiced, sweet laugh from before but something close to a cackle, and she immediately covers her mouth with her hand. 

Georgie laughs as well, calmer than Antigone’s. “Come on. Let’s get you to bed,” she says, grabbing her arm and helping her up, slipping an arm around her waist. “To the mortuary, then?” 

Antigone blinks at that. She’s fairly sure she hasn’t got a concussion, which means -- that’s a thing Georgie really said. “No, not to the mortuary,” she says. “To my room, please.”

“Oh! Sorry, I just thought -- you’re always saying you want to go to the mortuary, figured you lived there.”

This is fantastic; Georgie has been here for  _ years _ and evidently hasn’t noticed that Antigone goes to her own room in her own apartment every night. Well, a few times a week, at least. 

“No,” she says, jaw set. “I live upstairs, thank you. I can get there on my own.” She pulls away from Georgie and heads toward the stairs, keeping her breathing even though her ribs are  _ killing _ her. 

“Antigone,” Georgie says, quieter. “I’m sorry, alright? I’m sorry, it was a stupid question, course you have a room upstairs. Let me go up with you, yeah?” 

Antigone pauses on the steps. She goes to bed alone every night -- it might be nice, just this once, to have someone to talk to as she falls asleep. 

God, she’s absolutely losing it. Georgie doesn’t talk to her, doesn’t  _ ever _ want to talk to her and that’s fine. She appreciates the gesture anyway. 

“Yeah, you can come up,” she tells her, voice a little more gentle. She doesn’t look back, though, just heads upstairs and into her bathroom so she can check out the damage to her chest. 

It’s not that bad, in the end; there’s a wound but nothing to worry about. Rudyard certainly gave her worse when they were children. Privately, Antigone thinks Georgie’s being a little bit ridiculous. 

“Are you okay?” Georgie asks, waiting in the doorframe. “D’you need anything? Want me to run you a bath?” 

Antigone wrinkles her nose. She appreciates this, of course she does, but  _ honestly _ . “I’m fine, Georgie,” she tells her, tying her hair up and heading over to her bed. She kicks off her shoes and tugs her trousers down, tossing them across the room. 

She’s about to take her top off, as well, when she remembers Georgie’s there. Best leave that on, then. She’s sure it wouldn’t send the ‘wrong impression’ but certainly Georgie wouldn’t want -- that. 

She feels a little bit flushed just thinking about it like that, and shakes her head briskly to get rid of the thought. Whatever. 

“Are you sure you’re alright, love?” Georgie asks, sitting down next to her. She looks sad, even more than when Antigone had snapped at her earlier. 

“Yes,” she says quietly, looking down. “I’m going to be fine. You don’t have to stay here.” 

Georgie’s quiet for a second. Antigone’s bracing herself for her quick departure when she says, “I’m going to anyway, though.” 

Antigone frowns. “Why?”

“You might need someone in the middle of the night,” Georgie says, pulling away so she can get her jumper off. 

Antigone’s heart stops for a second before she registers that she’s wearing a vest. “I doubt I will,” she says. 

Georgie laughs. It’s -- it’s different than her usual laugh, but familiar all the same. “If you  _ do _ , though, I doubt Rudyard would come help you. And I haven’t got anywhere else to be, what’s a better way to spend my night?” 

Antigone doesn’t know what makes her say it. “Could go on a date with Chapman,” she says, dry. 

Georgie pauses, tilting her head. “Have you still got a thing for him?” 

“No,” Antigone says. She means it, as well; it turns out that actively opposing Chapman’s business makes him much less pretty to look at it. 

“You haven’t?” she asks, sounding genuinely curious.

“Nah,” she says, wrinkling her nose. “Dunno what happened, really, one day I was falling all over m’self and… the next it wasn’t any different to talking to Agatha.”

Georgie frowns a little bit. “Well, it’s not really the same, is it?” 

“I -- why not? I know it’s been a while but there was a time I couldn’t talk to her without wanting to kiss her,” Antigone says. 

“Oh,” Georgie says. “You -- you also fancy girls, then?” 

Huh. “Did you not know that?” she asks, blinking. “I could have sworn you knew… I do, anyway. I’m very rarely around women, though, least the ones that are alive.”

Georgie nods. She’s going a pale shade of pink. Antigone would be worried if she weren’t suddenly hit with a massive wave of tiredness. 

“I’m -- I’m really tired,” she admits, tucking her hair behind her ear. “Can I lie down?” 

“Course,” Georgie says. She gets up and pulls the duvet back, letting Antigone get in before she crawls in next to her. 

Antigone stills. 

“Told you I was staying with you tonight,” Georgie tells her. “I’m not pulling anything, I swear.” 

“It’s fine,” Antigone says. She scoots over to give her room. “I’ve never --” She cuts herself off. 

“What’s that?” Georgie asks softly. 

“No one’s ever -- ever shared a bed with me,” she mumbles, blushing dark. “It’s stupid, m’sorry.” 

Georgie scoots closer, slow like she’s afraid she’ll spook her. “That’s a shame,” she tells her, smiling. “Consider this another lesson in flirting, then, yeah?” 

Antigone’s heart feels as though it’s going to beat out of her chest. “Flirting?” she asks. 

Georgie nods. “Isn’t that usually where this goes?” she asks. “Sleep together because you like ‘em.” 

She nods, biting the inside of her cheek. “We could -- if you wanted to flirt with me, you could,” she tells her. 

Georgie’s brows furrow a bit. “Could I?” she asks. 

Antigone nods, scooting a little bit closer herself. “I’d like that,” she tells her. She does  _ not _ look at her mouth. Not even for a second. 

“In my experience, flirting leads to kissing,” Georgie says, looking over her face. “Wouldn’t want to risk stealing your first kiss from you.” 

“Technically you wouldn’t be stealing it,” Antigone points out. “Since I’d be giving it to you and all.”

Georgie laughs again. It still sounds familiar and sweet. 

Antigone, summoning all of the bravery in her, says, “Would you kiss me, Georgie?” 

Georgie’s blush darkens. “Course I will,” she promises, reaching up to feel over her cheek. “You’re sure?”

“Bloody hell, Georgie,  _ kiss me _ ,” Antigone says. Even if it’s just Georgie humoring her, she thinks it might be worth it. 

Georgie laughs and kisses her, curling her arm around Antigone’s waist. 

It’s sweet; it doesn’t feel like the kisses she’s read about, all of the fireworks people insist happens when they kiss their soulmate, but it’s nice. 

Antigone is smiling when she pulls back, though she gives her a couple more pecks. “How’s it feel to be my first kiss?” she asks her, feeling giddy and silly and -- well, not at all like herself. 

Georgie is breathless. There’s no reason to, not really but it’s -- it’s flattering. “Pretty great,” she tells her. 

They’re close enough that Antigone can feel her breath on her cheek. “How’d you feel if -- if I wanted to do that again?” 

Georgie rolls her eyes and kisses her. 

Looks like that’s her answer. 

*

(In the morning, after a fitful night’s sleep, Antigone wakes up to Rudyard pounding on her door and asking her where the  _ hell _ Georgie is.

Antigone grins and pulls a pillow over her head, muffling his shouts.

She pulls Georgie closer.) 

**Author's Note:**

> if you'd like to talk to me about wooden overcoats, you can find me on tumblr @ llucifered or on twitter @ haloutines! (please, i need to talk to more fans, haha.)


End file.
